Beauty and structural complexity

Lakhal, Samy; Darmon, Alexandre; Bouchaud, Jean‐Philippe; Benzaquen, Michael

doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.2.022058

Cited by 27 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Nevertheless, Birkhoff's ideas have been rediscovered and utilized in later work, with the aid of more modern mathematical tools, e.g., the Kolmogorov complexity is employed in [73] and [92] to compute the complexity of the image (a JPEG or fractal compression of the picture are used to approximate the Kolmogorov complexity, which is not computable), together with more sophisticated image processing tools such as image segmentation. Recently, a mathematical formulation of aesthetics based on thermodynamics that partially extends the principles of Birkhoff has been proposed in [56].…”

Section: Mathematical Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances and Challenges in Computational Image Aesthetics

Valenzise

Chen

Dufaux

2021

Human Perception of Visual Information

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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

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Section: Mathematical Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances and Challenges in Computational Image Aesthetics

Valenzise

Chen

Dufaux

2021

Human Perception of Visual Information

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“…C omplexity is one of the most fundamental properties of the world around us and a key subject for many natural and social sciences; in some of them, like biology, the origin of complexity is one of the central issues (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). Despite numerous attempts to give a formal definition of complexity (4,(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14), our understanding of these matters is still far from being complete. The famous motto "I know it when I see it" is definitely applicable to complexity but to formalize this feeling is a very nontrivial problem.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiscale structural complexity of natural patterns

Bagrov

Яковлев

Iliasov³

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Complexity of patterns is key information for human brain to differ objects of about the same size and shape. Like other innate human senses, the complexity perception cannot be easily quantified. We propose a transparent and universal machine method for estimating structural (effective) complexity of two-dimensional and three-dimensional patterns that can be straightforwardly generalized onto other classes of objects. It is based on multistep renormalization of the pattern of interest and computing the overlap between neighboring renormalized layers. This way, we can define a single number characterizing the structural complexity of an object. We apply this definition to quantify complexity of various magnetic patterns and demonstrate that not only does it reflect the intuitive feeling of what is “complex” and what is “simple” but also, can be used to accurately detect different phase transitions and gain information about dynamics of nonequilibrium systems. When employed for that, the proposed scheme is much simpler and numerically cheaper than the standard methods based on computing correlation functions or using machine learning techniques.

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“…Additionally, there is a component of aesthetic visual experience that is shaped by one's prior history with a stimulus class, as in ecological valence theories of preference (Palmer & Schloss, 2010), as well as a complex interplay between the emotions that a stimulus evokes and our subsequent impression of its appearance (Madan et al, 2018). However, beyond these factors, there is surely also a component of aesthetic experience that derives from more basic aspects of visual processing, and our work joins the many studies that have explored those more basic factors, such as orientation (Latto & Russell-Duff, 2002), curvedness (Bar & Neta, 2006), symmetry (Damiano et al, 2021), and more (Birkhoff, 1933;Chen et al, 2021;Graham & Redies, 2010;Lakhal et al, 2020;Milne & Herff, 2020;Palmer et al, 2008;Palmer & Guidi, 2011;Vitz, 1966).…”

Section: Beauty and Complexity: Where Old Meets Newmentioning

confidence: 68%

Beautiful on the inside: Aesthetic preferences and the skeletal complexity of shapes

Sun¹,

Firestone²

2022

Preprint

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A plain, blank canvas doesn’t look very beautiful; to make it aesthetically appealing requires adding structure and complexity. But how much structure is best? In other words, what is the relationship between beauty and complexity? It has long been hypothesized that complexity and beauty meet at a “sweet spot”, such that the most beautiful images are neither too simple nor too complex. Here, we take a novel experimental approach to this question, using an information-theoretic approach to object representation based on internal ’skeletal’ structure. We algorithmically generated a library of 2D polygons, and manipulated their complexity by gradually smoothing out their features — essentially decreasing the amount of information in the objects. We then stylized these shapes as “paintings” by rendering them with artistic strokes, and “mounted” them on framed canvases hung in a virtual room. Participants were shown pairs of these mounted shapes (which possessed similar structure but varied in their skeletal complexity), and were asked to choose which shape looked best by previewing how each painting appeared on the canvas. Experiment 1 revealed a “Goldilocks” effect: Participants preferred paintings that were neither too simple nor too complex, such that moderately complex shapes were chosen as the most attractive paintings. Experiment 2 isolated the role of complexity per se: When the same shapes were scrambled (such that their structural complexity was undermined, while other visual features were preserved), the Goldilocks effect was dramatically diminished. These findings suggest a quadratic relationship between aesthetics and complexity in ways that go beyond previous measures of each, and demonstrate the utility of information-theoretic approaches for exploring high-level aspects of visual experience.

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Beauty and structural complexity

Cited by 27 publications

References 28 publications

Advances and Challenges in Computational Image Aesthetics

Advances and Challenges in Computational Image Aesthetics

Multiscale structural complexity of natural patterns

Beautiful on the inside: Aesthetic preferences and the skeletal complexity of shapes

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